Description

The Ar 234 C-3 is a rank V German jet bomber
with a battle rating of 7.0 (AB) and 7.3 (RB/SB). This jet bomber was introduced in Update 1.49 "Weapons of Victory".

General info

Flight Performance

The Ar 234 C-3 is all you need as a jet bomber. Acceleration is decent and maximum speed at 500 m is 850 km/h when stock. When upgraded, acceleration is great, energy retention is nice and can reach up to 900 km/h IAS at 1000m.

Climb rate is great even when stock. Combining the +3500m first spawn altitude and nice climb rate, the Arado Ar 234 C-3 is a great choice for bomber players. The dive speed is incredible and together with perfect energy retention, you can reach very high speeds in some seconds. Unfortunately there is no WEP, but it's not that important.

How to land?

Landing is not that hard, but a little dangerous. You can land after a dive as well as when slow. Landing at low speeds is really easy, but here's the steps when landing after a dive:

Decrease throttle to 0%, go up in 90° and lose speed.

After falling down, open combat flaps, then take-off flaps. Throttle must be about 30%.

Open gears and landing flaps to lose more speed, landing with negative or 0 degrees (will tell you why). Gears will extend really fast.

You can land at about 300 km/h as well as lower speeds, so don't worry about it.

Use brakes and stopping power of cannons to complete your landing!

Some notes:

Do not power the engines off. You may need to throttle up and get more stability.

Do not perform hard maneuvers, you're at high speed after a dive so the pilot can lose its control and may lead to a crash.

Flaps are really important for landing, so if you don't have them or they're damaged, decrease speed as much as possible.

The mono-landing gear under cockpit placement is strong enough to sustain hard landing.

Why 0 or negative degree when landing? There's no landing gear at the back. So approaching at a positive degree may cause the tail to touch the ground and cause the plane to crash.

Don't worry about absence of air brakes, your skill is your brakes. Do maneuvers in low engine power and lose speed.

Usage in battles

The standard bombs on the Ar 234 C-3 are 3 x 250 kg bombs and 3 x 500 kg bombs. You will have access to them even if your Arado is stock. Additionally, this variant of the Arado possesses 2 x 20 mm MG 151 cannons, so one of the best ways to use your Arado to ensure you can farm RP and SL for your modifications is:

1- Equip the 3 x 500 kg bombs and start the match at the air spawn point.

2- On maps such as Berlin, move to one of the enemy bases and drop your 3 x 500 kg bombs. 1.5 tonnes worth of bombs are enough to destroy a base, so from there you have two options to choose from:

2.1 - Go back to the airfield and get new bombs
If you choose to go back to the airfield to get new bombs, be aware that unfortunately, the Arado does not have any air brakes, which is a problem as it has particularly good energy retention and some pilots may find it hard to safely land.

When landing the Arado, decrease speed by turning before you reach the airfield (aim to be at 400 km/h or less) then align with the landing strip, activate your flaps and proceed with the landing. If using the landing gear, ensure that you are at extremely low speed before landing or that the landing strip is long enough to stop on. The Arado has extremely good energy retention and is very heavy, so it does take a long time to stop. You can land without gear, which, while obviously dangerous, offers a much better chance to stop in time on shorter landing strips. To do this, land flat on the belly and avoid allowing the wings to touch the ground before you stop moving.

2.2 - Search for enemy targets
Once you have dropped your bombs, you can turn your sights to enemy aircraft; the Arado C-3 is quite capable as a fighter, especially in comparison to other German BR 7.0 jets. It doesn't suffer from the same issues as the Me 262, which lacks in power and once it loses energy, often struggles to regain it, or the Ho 229, which can rip its wings very easily in high-G manoeuvres. With the Arado, you won't encounter these kinds of problems, providing you don't attempt to turn fight. The Arado C-3 has the best climb rate of any BR 7.0 German jet. It also possesses a roll rate to rival the Me 262, so with your 4 powerful engines, you have everything you need to take on other jets. As such, once you've finished your bombing run, turn and climb towards the battlefield, and try to maintain altitude above other jets. Once you're reasonably high, pick vulnerable targets and dive in for a pass, taking a shot at them and then moving away to retain your energy. Avoid exceeding 750km/h when stock, as past that the dive can be hard to arrest. Once all modifications have been researched, however, the aircraft gains a reasonable amount of additional leeway before you encounter issues. If everything falls apart, and you gain fighters on your tail, try to keep accelerating if possible and try to bait the enemies near your own team so they can assist you.

Manual Engine Control

MEC elements

Mixer

Pitch

Radiator

Supercharger

Turbocharger

Oil

Water

Type

Not controllable

Not controllable

Not controllable

Not controllable

Separate

Not controllable

Not controllable

Modules

Tier

Flight performance

Survivability

Weaponry

I

Fuselage Repair, Compressor

II

Airframe

ETC 1001 I

III

Wing Repair, Engine

Offensive 20 mm

IV

Cover

New 20 mm Cannons

Pros and cons

Pros:

Incredibly fast

Very good at destroying individual ground units in AB

Cannons provide decent air to air performance

Very good climb rate

Four engines provides the much-needed speed increase from the previous model

Good acceleration

Stock payload is very versatile

Air spawn at 3,500 meters

Very good energy retention

Has periscope gunsight at top-left of the cockpit, aids in more effective targeting

Periscope gunsight helps you identify enemy aircraft types sooner

Cons:

While stock, is hard to recover from dives in speeds beyond 750 km/h

Pilot is usually easily knocked out

Can't carry many bombs, which means that you only can destroy 1 enemy base per bomb load

Doesn't have air brakes and combined with planes very good energy retention makes landing potentially very dangerous

No gunsight in the non-scoped cockpit, you have to rely on perception to aim

Worse turn rate than the previous model

Very big jet bomber target when compared to Brtish and American competitors

History

Describe the history of the creation and combat usage of the aircraft in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the vehicle and adding a block "/ History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Vehicle-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article. This section may also include the vehicle's dev blog entry (if applicable) and the in-game encyclopedia description (under === In-game description ===, also if applicable).

In-game description

"The Arado Ar 234 Blitz (Lightning) was the world's first operational jet bomber, built by Arado in Germany during WWII. It was used by the Luftwaffe for reconnaissance from November 1944 and as a fast bomber against Allied targets from December of that year. Despite the fact that late in the war the plane was used only sporadically due to a fuel shortage, it remained a very difficult target to intercept because of its high speed.

As a bomber, the Ar-234B-2 could carry a payload of up to 2,000 kg and could also be used for reconnaissance."

Media

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See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example: